Libya: Qaddafi Won't Free Nurses in HIV Case

From CDC National Prevention Information Network

March 24, 2005

Despite strong protests from the United States and the European Union, Libya's Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi will not release the five Bulgarian nurses who were convicted and sentenced to death for allegedly infecting children at a Benghazi hospital with HIV in 1998. "I swear to God I will not release them," Qaddafi told an Arab League summit conference in Algiers. The verdicts were based on confessions that the nurses say were extracted under torture. Late last year, Tripoli suggested it would release the medics in exchange for financial payments, but Bulgaria balked, saying any compensation would be an admission of guilt.

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